2017 SDR. AR full exhaust, Power Commander with Auto Tune - mapped well, Rottweiller kit, etc.. Lots of torque, great midrange, but once in 5th or 6th it's a sitting duck on the straights. Been racing SDRs since 09. Fully understand the no fairings handicap. Feels like this is more than that. Almost feels like the ECU is limiting throttle opening in high gears. I've read on here and other places about ECU flashing, but as of yet I have not confirmed if KTM does limit these 1290 fly-by-wire SDRs. Does anyone here know?

I hoped I was doing everything electronically that I could by getting the Power Commander stuff. Maybe I was wrong. The guys at the shop started the mapping based on the stock map, rather than KTM's Akrapovic map. Perhaps that was a mistake as well.

It's got the Rottweiller velocity stacks and air filter kit, which quite frankly I am not sure I love. Seems to me a lot of hot air and turbulance is under that tank this way, rather than what could be cleaner, cooler and more efficient air supply using a proper ram-air system. I'm thinking of designing one for this bike, like I did years ago for the 990. Seemed to help that bike greatly with top end. 1.5 seconds faster with the home-grown ram airbox at Laguna compared to stock airbox.

I'm real curious if anyone has thoughts on this top end problem. That's really my goal - more power at speeds over 120mph. At Willow Springs the bike wouldn't pull past 5th, and that's a long straight.

Can't offer any help, but this is the first I've read that someone was complaining about power on this bike. It'd be interesting to see a dyno chart and look at your hp/torque curve and afr curve. Good luck, hope you get it sorted.

Thanks for the quick reply. I agree, it's a powerful bike. Best SDR I've ever raced. Tons of torque, great midrange, just falls on it's face up top. I did get a response from Open Flash who mentioned two problems I may be experiencing above 9000rpm - one is mapping, the other is spark advance. I know the Power Commander handles mapping, which I have seen the numbers on and they look good, but I do not know if PC changes spark advance. Like I said I think it was a mistake using the stock map as a baseline for Power Commander to build from. Early tomorrow I'll go to get the Akrapovic map installed, then I'll bring it for some dyno time. I'll share what it does here, tomorrow.

I finally got the bike to a dyno. Alex at Fastlinelinecycles.com fine tuned two maps - one for 91 octane fuel, the other for MR12 fuel. Peak hp with 91 octane was 164.08. Peak hp with MR12 was 168.61.

So MR12 is worth the money to me, it's almost 5hp more. Sorry I did not ask Alex to display torque. More on that in a minute.

Once done Alex turned to me and suggested I introduce myself to the people at Open Flash Performance. "Oh yea, why is that" I asked. Then Alex brought up their map and displayed it over mine. I was blown away.

Apparently the owner of Open Flash Performance owns a 1290 SDR. And apparently that 1290 SDR was tuned on the very same dyno that my bike is still strapped to right now. Look at the curve they get with their SDR. Stock motor, 91 octane pump gas, Rottweiller airbox and a full Akra pipe... That's it.

They get the same hp at 8,300rpm as my SDR gets at 10,000rpm. Only my SDR has that much horsepower for about one millisecond, where theirs has that much power for 2000rpm.

From the looks of this chart they get 10hp more with their tune than I do with my SDR at 7000rpm. I nearly fainted. And then I called them. And now Monday we will be tuning my SDR with their system. I will post our results here as well. And this time I will get Alex to display the torque curve too. Sorry about that.

...as for my "falling flat" on the straights. Alex had to turn all traction/wheelie control OFF to run the bike on the dyno. While scrolling through the menus to do this he noticed that my bikes settings were at 6. He looked at me sort of cross-eyed and asked why I had the traction control at six. I answered "There's a six? I thought it was just on or off.." Alex just shook his head, like so many people who help me do, and once again I was shamed into the corner with a dunce cap placed on my head.

It's possible, and quite frankly hopeful, that what I was feeling was the ECU interrupting full power via these aggressive settings.

Interesting. The adjustable traction control is only on the newer bikes (>'17), so it never occurred to me either. The TC on earlier bikes, like mine, is either on or off. Kinda funny if too much power was your problem. Keep us posted with the OFT results, I'm curious. Lots of info on the Aprilia forum about them.

That's what got me too. I raced the 2014 in 2015 and that's what got me thinking ON/OFF was all there was. I had no idea there were so many increments. Now I can screw myself up with clickers, springs AND buttons. How cool :+)

to follow up on this, we just got back from AFM round 4. After the Open Flash Performance deal, and MR12 race fuel, we've now got about 174hp at 10,000rpm. Not as great a curve as the bike they did with the Akra system, but much improved over what we had initially with just the Power Commander mapping and auto tune. Yet even with all this, by Saturday's end I'd still say it felt flat-ish on the front straight. So then we got into gearing.

Most bikes I've set up and raced at these tracks out here, we start them at @3 teeth shorter than stock, then go up or down from there. But the 3 teeth shorter always seems to be a good starting point, no matter the bike. Until yesterday and this Superduke. Stock this bike came with a 17 up front and a 38 in the rear. We changed to a 16 up front and the bike couldn't reach 6th on the front straight. Just lagged all the way down the straight with only one gear change all the way. That's anemic. So Sunday we went to a 15 up front and kept a 38 in the rear. Now the bike pulls hard all the way through. Now it's the animal we all know and love. ZX10s will always be faster, but now they're a lot less faster than they've been all season. Progress!

Interesting take on the SDR. I have the same feeling. Once your over 200 kms the SDR is a sitting duck for a litre bike with full fairing. Pull on them & pass coming out of the corner only to be taken at the end of a straight. I am afraid theres not a dam thing we can do.

10,000 RPM sounds a little aggressive for this motor. I short shift mine. looking at your dyno chart tells me to shift at 9,000